


The Epilogue Effect

by aileenrose



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, M/M, Married Life, Midlife Crisis, after the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 16:12:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3417125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aileenrose/pseuds/aileenrose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When there's nothing left to hunt, Dean takes on the biggest challenge of all: life at forty-two. Thankfully Cas is there to help him out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Epilogue Effect

It happens when Dean is sitting at a stoplight. He doesn’t see it change right away, because he’s texting Cas to ask if the milk he wanted needs to be two percent or whole, and the car behind him blares its horn, the driver yelling, quite clearly, “Get the lead out of your ass, old man!”

                Dean is pretty taken aback because he doesn’t find anything about himself or his car to signify _old_ , which is why he leans out of his window and says, “Watch who you’re calling old!”

                Which should have settled it, but as he moves his foot over to the gas, this lippy _teenager_ , probably driving on her fucking _temps permit,_ just yells back, “Then fuckin’ drive, Grandpa!”

                It leaves Dean with a bad taste in his mouth. Grandpa? _Grandpa_? He’s distracted and irritated doing his shopping, has to run back for the milk while he’s checking out, and when he gets home he marches straight back to the bedroom, where Cas is, and throws open the door dramatically.

                It’s evening, now, so Cas is sitting up against the pillows with a book and his reading glasses low on his nose. He looks mildly alarmed when Dean storms in.

                “—fucking _Honey Boo Bear_ , or whatever, thinks she can just call me an _old_ man—I mean, do I look like some suburban dad to you? Do I look all settled and soulless and shit?”

                Cas seems to think solemnly about that for a moment, and then he peers at Dean over the top of his glasses and he says, “Well, we _did_ get a couples’ massage last week.”           

                Dean’s jaw honestly drops because really, whose side is Cas on? “Only because Sam gave us the certificates!”

                “Because you said you’d been feeling a little tense lately—” Cas says, and breaks off when he sees Dean’s face. “What?”              

                “Oh my god,” Dean says, sitting down heavily on the side of the bed. “I _am_ old. Oh my god _._ It happened. I’ve reached the Dad Years.”

                Cas leans reassuringly against his back. “What are the Dad Years?”

                “Jesus,” Dean says. Like, he’d died over a hundred times in his life, he should be more than versed on the lesson of mortality. And yet, he never quite thought it would happen to him, Dean Winchester, world-saver, Righteous Man, whatever. “The Dad Years, Cas. When I’m suddenly indistinguishable from any other man my age, because we all have the same haircut and laugh at the same jokes. The years that pretty much directly correlate with the _twilight of your life_. _”_

“Maybe I should call Sam and Amelia,” Cas says, reaching for the phone, but Dean shakes his head.

                “Sam would only laugh at me,” Dean says darkly, shaking his head. “He’s still on the good side of the hill.”

                “Okay,” Cas says. “What can we do to make you feel better about this, Dean?”

                Dean can’t help but quirk a smile, even in his foul mood. Some things about Cas never change. Even after falling, even after helping to close the portal out of Hell and restore the cast-out angels to Heaven, even after giving up his grace and electing to live out the rest of his human life here, he is still pretty much the same as that multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent, always coming when called, willing to go above and beyond to help Dean.

                “Just go to bed with me and don’t call me Ward Cleaver by accident.”

                Cas nods uncertainly and slides over to make room for Dean. After Dean changes and clambers under the covers, Cas throws a leg over Dean’s thigh and curls close.

                “I love you,” Cas says, because he’s been a huge fucking sap ever since they finally hashed out their feelings for each other three years before, after Cas decided to stay.

                So it’s a good thing Dean is just as much a sap, if not more. “Love you too,” he says, and falls asleep with Cas’s hot breath on his throat.

**

                He wakes Cas up in the morning by grabbing his arm and pushing it up under his own shirt.

                “Dean, what?” Cas says. He’s got his dark hair sticking up all weird on one side, and a furrow between his eyebrows. It’s only five in the morning.

                “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Dean says in a dangerous voice.

                “What? Tell you about what?”

                Dean slaps Cas’s hand against his belly for emphasis, cringing at the sound.

                “You,” Cas says, rubbing his face into the pillow. Then, seriously, like he’s breaking some news to him: “Dean, like most humans, you have a stomach.”

                “No, I don’t have a stomach, I have a fuckin’ _paunch_ , Cas! Warn a guy, man, tell him to lay off the tacos!”

                Cas sits up on his shoulder and pushes Dean’s shirt up, looking critically at the exposed skin in the half-dark of the room. “It’s just a little layer of fat,” he says. “It’s not uncommon for men of a certain age to start—”

                Dean pushes his hand away. “The buck stops here,” he says. “I’m coming with you on your run today.”

                Cas looks inordinately pleased with that announcement. Ever since he became a full-fledged human, he’s worked hard to keep his body, once Jimmy Novak’s, in the best shape possible. The flat stomach and the strong thighs more than attest to that. When Sam visits from Texas every few months, he’ll join Cas on his hellish five mile morning run every sun-up, but beyond that he’s never had company. Dean likes to sleep in and make muffins, so sue him.

                Forty five minutes later, Dean is outside with Cas in the dewy lawn, mimicking the stretches Cas is doing.

                “We can start small,” Cas is saying. “Maybe just a mile and a half today—”

                “Nah, whatever you normally do,” Dean says. “I can keep up.”

                Two miles in, and Dean feels like he might die. He’s actually pretty light-headed by the time Cas catches his arm and slows him to a stop. Cas, that fucker, hasn’t even broken a sweat yet.

                “Dean, don’t push yourself too hard the first day,” he says. “Let’s just walk back.”

                “I don’t get it,” Dean says, standing there with his hands on his knees like a chump. “I was the best there _is_. I could stop the Apocalypse, and chase down Hellhounds, and kill a Knight of Hell—and I can’t run a few laps around the neighborhood?”

                “Dean, you can’t be at a physical peak for your whole life,” Cas says. He hands him a water bottle. “And just because you can’t run five miles on your first try doesn’t take away any of those other achievements. Come on, drink it.”

                And, when Dean takes a few calming sips, Cas follows that up by saying lightly, “And there _are_ other, more pleasurable ways of burning calories, you know.”

                The muffins end up burning, but Dean thinks it’s still a pretty successful morning overall.

**

                Dean gives up on _that_ venture soon enough, but the problem is still far from over. While Cas is out tending in the garden, Dean goes and turns on the bathroom light, looking at himself critically in the mirror. When did these changes happen? There’s a sprinkle of gray around his ears that Cas called _dignified_ once, and likes to touch tenderly, and there are some lines across his forehead and around his eyes that definitely weren’t there ten years ago. His freckles are much more apparent now, mostly from helping Cas mulch outside over the summer. Maybe hunting has prematurely aged him; he certainly dealt with enough stressful shit over the first half of his life.

                It’ll all be downhill from here, but even though Dean is 42 now, he just doesn’t know when the ride started going in that direction. When was the last time a woman smiled flirtatiously at him at the store? He combs his memory but comes up blank. The gold wedding band might put off most people, of course, but if Dean was still as attractive as he thought he was, his ring finger wouldn’t be the first thing most people would see. When was the last time a server at a diner called him _sweetie_ , or someone leaned a little too far over his lap when ordering drinks at the bar?

                Probably because Cas is always with him. He and Cas, sitting across from each other at a booth at the local diner; he and Cas, unwinding over a drink at the end of the day. It’s not like he would return or act upon any interest shown towards him by anyone other than Cas.

                It makes him feel ashamed, but he doesn’t want to be invisible, to slide away into the obscure Dad Years. He doesn’t want to be just another face in the crowd. Before Cas, before settling down, before saving the world, Dean always had that—a flirtatious smile on a street corner, a lingering look over the shoulder that helped cement just who Dean Winchester was, just what he had to offer.

**

                While Cas is at Church on Sunday, Dean dips out to the local grocery and, after about fifteen minutes of indecision, buys a box of Clairol for men. He follows the instructions to the letter, and is just jumping in the shower when Cas gets home.

                He’s feeling pretty good about himself because he did a hell of a job picking the right color, and not a single one of his gray hairs is visible anymore. He still has a damn fine head of hair, if he says so himself.

                Downstairs, Cas has the newspaper spread out in front of him on the kitchen table, and he double-takes as soon as Dean walks in. He struts around a little self-consciously under Cas’s gaze.

                “Hair dye?” One side of his mouth is curving up, a little hesitantly.

                “Yep,” Dean says, and gives him a smacking kiss on the cheek. “No more grays are gonna sneak up on Dean Winchester, not on my watch!”

**

                Maybe it’s the clothes that are aging him, too. Dean’s never really moved beyond flannel and leather jackets, which must be what all the rock stars of old never moved beyond, either. Most of the husbands up and down the street wear pretty much the same get-up, minus a bit of Dean’s grunge—collared button-ups, polos, t-shirts for their favorite sports teams.

                Dean knows better than to go down the Ed Hardy route, at least. He spends a long afternoon at the local mall, scouting out what the most fashionable types of stores are. Unknown to him at the time, he misses four straight calls from Cas, trying to remind him to some eggs that they can devil for the block party later that night. Instead, he ends up in the clutches of a salesgirl working on commission in Von Maur, whatever _that_ is, who is only too happy following Dean’s singular request of making him “2015 hot.”

                Dean walks in late to the block party, a twelve-pack of Old Milwaukees in his hand, and apologizes for not being on time.

                “Dean,” says his neighbor, Jeff. “You look, uh, different.”

                Cas is leaning against the counter, sipping a glass of wine and talking about the alarmingly dropping rate of bees, and he doesn’t say anything when he sees Dean, although his forehead scrunches up a bit.

                Someone compliments his scarf and puffy vest, which Dean shrugs off like he gets those kinds of compliments all the time, and then there’s this undercurrent of _oooh_ s when he shrugs off his vest and scarf and reveals the deep v neck shirt that the Von Maur salesgirl said only the trendiest can pull off. He’d felt a little self-conscious at first, because like half of his anti-possession tattoo was out in the open, plus most of his chest, but after years of layers he’s actually feeling pretty uninhibited.

                “Um,” Jeff says, as Dean pops the tab to his beer. “Those are nice shoes, too, Dean.”

                “Thanks,” Dean say. “They’re called Toms, if you’ve heard of them.”

**

                Dean’s looking over his new rack of clothes in the closet when Cas pads into the bedroom on quiet feet.

                “Hey,” he says. “You off somewhere?”

                It’s a Tuesday night. Normally they go to the bar together on Thursday, because the drinks are half off and the karaoke starts around 10. It’s become something of a routine for them, and Cas loves taking videos of Dean belting out Bruce Springsteen and sending them to Sam.

                “Yeah,” Dean says. “Someone at work today mentioned a new club’s opened downtown, thought it might be worth checking out.”

                “A club?” Cas says. “That sounds…fun.”

                “I’ll be back by midnight,” Dean says, wondering if he should top off his look tonight with the fedora that was mostly an impulse buy; the sales girl had assured him that nice guys did _not_ wear fedoras, and Dean was never exactly apple pie.

                “Right,” Cas says. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed now, and when Dean turns around he sees Cas’s worry in the way he clenches his jaw.

                “What’s wrong?”

                “I was talking to Sam today,” Cas says, which can never be a good thing. “Sam said you might be going through, well, a midlife crisis.”

                “A crisis?” Dean snorts. “This is the farthest thing. I’m trying to feel better about myself, and it’s been working.”

                Cas looks down at his hands, laced loosely in his lap. “Dean, if you want to dress up and attract attention, and go to clubs and—and, well, not want to bring me along, I think I understand where this is going. Sam says it’s not uncommon for some men your age to feel the need to reassure themselves of their masculinity, and if that’s what you need, than I’m okay—”

                Dean is across the room, with a hand over Cas’s mouth, in a second flat. “Dude, you’re seriously not trying to Hall Pass me right now.”

                Cas tilts his head back a little and says uncertainly, “I’m…not sure.”

                “Dude, please, _fuck_ , never say anything like that again. This isn’t about you, or me and you, or anything even remotely close. I swear. I just want to let loose a little, have a little fun. _Nothing_ like that. I promise.”

                “Okay,” Cas says, but there’s a certain vulnerable squint to his eyes that Dean doesn’t like.

                “Fedora, no fedora?” Dean says, modeling it on top of his head.

                “I don’t think you want to hear my answer,” Cas says.

                “No fedora, then,” Dean says, and shoves it hastily into the back of the closet. “I love you. I’ll be home in a few hours, okay?”

                He drops a quick kiss on Cas’s head and then lingers a moment, pressing his nose into Cas’s ruffled hair, because Cas is good and loving and lets him do this, the word _let_ isn’t even in his vocabulary, and Dean is so fucking lucky to have him.

**

                The club doesn’t even bother carding him, even though they’d just finished scrutinizing the IDs of the four girls in tight dresses that were in line before him. Inside, there’s a freaking clusterfuck of people, so tightly jammed Dean can barely shoulder his way through, with pulsing lights overhead and something that must be music rattling his teeth.

                Dean enjoys just standing there for a few minutes, being a part of it all, and then he spots the bar and eventually is able to make his way over.

                “Hey,” he says to the bartender. “Do you—”

                “Yes, we’ve been carding,” the bartender says, sloshing vodka into a shot glass. “No minors in here.”

                Dean’s really confused for a moment, and then he says, “Dude, I’m not an undercover cop!”

                The  bartender shrugs. “Sure, man. Can I get you anything?”

                Dean leans forward. “What’s the most popular drink here?”

                The gummi bear shot is the biggest waste of seven dollars in Dean’s life, his mouth feels like the sound stage for My Little Ponies, and he pushes his way back onto the dance floor and looks around at the mass of writhing bodies around him.

                There’s a cluster of girls dancing near him, and one holds eye contact with him, so he leans forward and says, “Is this all they play?” Because it appears to be computer noises with the odd chorus that everyone in the club seems to know but him.

                The girl is looking at him a bit warily, and shouts, “ _What_?” to be heard over the music.

                Dean gestures wildly over his head. “Is. _This_. All. They. Play?”

                She gives him a bemused look, and smiles and nods yes, before turning back to her crowd of friends.

                Dean, looking around, does see a few people around the same age of him. All men, standing on their own, and honestly they look creepy as fuck. They seem to like to lounge in doorways, or lining the walls, and he sees one of them reach out and grab a girl’s ass as she goes by. She turns back and hits him with her purse—this right as a song is ending—and tells him to go back to Bingo Night, which Dean decides he doesn’t want to ever be on the receiving end of.

                Right now, what he wants most is to be home in bed with Cas, watching reruns of Doctor Sexy while Cas reads and runs his hands through Dean’s hair. He’s been here long enough, it must be nearly midnight by now, from how tired Dean is feeling. He checks his watch and sees that no, it’s only 9:30. Fuck.

                Leaving, Dean makes his way through a crowd of flailing limbs, someone cops a blatant feel but it does anything but make Dean’s night, and the bouncer at the door gives him a knowing look.

                “Let me guess, a noise complaint?” he says.

                “No, I’m leaving,” Dean says, with dignity, but then he turns back and says, “but since you asked, _yes,_ it’s way too loud in there; they’re all gonna lose their hearing before they hit thirty!”

                “Have a good night, sir,” the bouncer says, and Dean shivers in his v-neck all the way back to his car.

**

                His car, he decides, is half the problem. People don’t have respect for the classics anymore. Now _classic_ is synonymous with _old_. Dean will never think that, obviously, but it wouldn’t hurt to have something else on the docket for a little bit of fun. Dean could use a little bit of danger in his life.

                The fact of the matter is that Dean’s living the most safe life he could ever have. He and Cas put up sigils and wards and traps, just in case, and Dean still has a gun in the bedside table, but those were all precautions. The biggest threats to Dean these days are identity theft, or heart disease. His bedside table is packed with all kinds of miscellanea these days that have _nothing_ to do with violence, that’s for sure.

                There might not be any danger in Dean’s life anymore, but maybe people need a reminder that Dean can be a dangerous person. Dean is not someone you would want to cross. Dean—that’s right, Dean Winchester, once killed four demons with nothing but a dish towel and his bare hands. Dean once shot Lucifer in the face. He’s not just some suburban dad with a business degree, and he never could be.

                With that kind of thinking, Dean’s pretty convinced he knows what the next step is. He also knows, in the back of his mind, that he knows it’s at least a _little_ wrong, because he does all his shopping at night, when Cas is asleep, surfing Craigslist. He knows Cas wouldn’t approve.

                On a Saturday he rents a trailer and meets up with a guy on the outskirts of town who has a beautiful, practically brand-new motorcycle for sale.

                “It’s a shame,” the guy says. “But we just had a baby and the ole’ ball and chain doesn’t want me doing anything dangerous.”

                Dean nods his head like he totally gets it. “Oh, yeah,” he says. “Totally.”

                It’s a simple enough transaction, a lump sum of cash and then Dean’s given the keys. The guy helps Dean load the motorcycle up into the trailer and gives him a handshake before sending him off. All the way home, Dean is salivating, just thinking about his leather jacket and the chrome and the wind in his face, the heads that will turn when they hear his engine come screaming down the street.

                When he gets home, he realizes that maybe he should have had the guy show him a thing or two, or let him take it for a test-drive, because Dean’s actually never ridden a motorcycle. He straddles it and tries to get his balance just right, plays with the clutch for a little bit, scootches it back and forth in the driveway. Jeff comes out and waves and then Dean has to stop so they can have a nice man to man conversation, how lucky Dean is that Cas let him do this— _Jeff’s_ wife would skin him alive if he came home with a bike—and then Jeff takes a picture of it. Dean, perched on the bike with a big smile and his gut sucked in, because he’s still a little self-conscious about it.

                “Oh, man, you’ll have to tell me how your first ride is,” Jeff says, enthusiastically, and Dean nods and kicks up the stand and slowly eases into the street.

                Really easy, it turns out. Nothing to it. He likes the thrum of the bike between his legs, and the wind beating at his clothes, and the heads that turn when he passes by. A little kid points and he lifts his hand to wave, making Dean’s chest swell all the more. He wants to get Cas to come out on the bike with him; Cas would feel like he’s flying again.

 And then Dean comes up to an intersection with a green light for him, and he’s just gunning the engine a bit when a car turns right in front of him, not seeing him, and Dean’s last thought is _Cas_ as he swerves and the motorcycle skids sideways and—

**

                The thing is, Dean thinks, alone in the hospital room—the thing is, he needs to be honest with himself.

                He’s scared shitless. Forty marks the decline, forty is when you realize you only have half your life left. Dean always thought he’d never hit forty—before that, he thought he’d never thirty, and before _that_ , twenty five. Dean’s never made long term plans for a happy, white picket fence life. He didn’t think he’d live to see it.

                There are no monsters anymore. No demons, no angels, nothing to save the world from. Dean Winchester is a legend for doing that, but he’s also only a legend in a secret way, to the people who were once hunters themselves, and those people aren’t going to live forever, either. Nowadays Dean is just an old man with a GED and a job at the local mechanic’s and he’s still afraid to look himself in the face sometimes, because this is all there is now, just an afterthought. Just Dean.

                Just Dean, and then just Dean and his husband. Cas strides in with a white face just then and when he sees Dean he lets out an explosive breath and collapses into the bedside chair, his head in his hands.

                “I thought you were,” Cas says. “Oh my God. I got the call at work. I heard _car accident_ and it seemed like the ground dropped out beneath me.”

                Dean makes a few clumsy swipes for Cas’s arm, but he can’t move very much, and finally Cas looks up and takes his hand and crushes it between his own.

                “I’m sorry,” Dean mumbles. “Sorry, sorry—”

                “You can’t do this,” Cas says. His eyes are wet. “Dean, _please_. Do whatever you need to, try all the new things you want, but you _can’t_ do this again. After all this time, you can’t do something that’s going to take you away from me.”

                “I promise,” Dean says, lifting Cas’s hand so he can press a kiss into his jittering palm. “Jesus, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what’s been wrong with me.”

                “Nothing’s wrong with you,” Cas says.

                “A whole lot is wrong with me,” Dean corrects. “But one of the only things I’ve ever done right is let myself have this life with you. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to reverse the clock over here, I’ve been trying everything I can to pretend that I still have time to—”

                “Dean, you’re _forty two_ ,” Cas says, smiling through his tears. “You’ll have all the time you need, and then some.”

**

                Cas carefully steers the Impala back home later that day. Dean, lying in the back seat with his right leg in a cast, has to admit that things could have gone a whole lot worse.

                Dean tells Cas to get rid of the motorcycle. Sell it, give it away, pawn off its parts—Dean doesn’t care. There’s a weight off his chest when Cas tells him it’s gone.  And then Dean lounges on the bed while Cas pulls out each new piece of clothing Dean bought and lets Dean decide whether he wants to keep it or not. Most of it goes, although Dean finds that some stuff is salvageable. Nonetheless, he lets out a sigh of relief when he has his flannel back on at last.

                “Let’s just pretend this past month never happened,” he says.

                “Then you wouldn’t have learned anything,” Cas says, and smiles at him.

                That night, they lay together in bed and Dean confesses the stuff that he should have told Cas in the first place. That he’s afraid of growing older, of having nothing to show for it. He’s afraid of the inevitable day when he loses Cas, or loses Sam, or the reaper comes for him. He only just got his happy life, and it’s not fair that he won’t have enough _time—_

“Dean,” Cas says. “You’re going to live a very full, very happy life. A long life. You’re going to become an uncle, and you’re going to host family Thanksgivings, and you’re probably going to try Thai food at some point, and take up yoga, and travel to a different country. You’re going to experience everything a human should. And then, yes, you’ll die.”

                “Gee, thanks, Cas,” Dean says.

                Cas pets over Dean’s hair for a long moment, and says, “There’s nothing to be afraid of this time, Dean. When the time comes, you’re going to be saturated with life, sated by it. It won’t hurt a bit. It’ll feel like the fading of the longest, sweetest ache.”

                “Cas—”

                “And then you’ll open your eyes, and you’ll be as young and strong as you want to be. You’ll have the most beautiful soul in all of Heaven. Every loved one that you’ve lost, every friend and family member, will be there. And I’ll be waiting there for you, in whatever Heaven of your choosing. I’ll be waiting for you, because I am yours, and you are mine, and everything after this is only a continuation.”

                Dean’s lived and died more times than he can count. He thinks he looks forward to this life most of all.

**

                Dean can’t move around much, because of the cast. He gains more weight around his midsection, like its karma or something, and pouts about it. He knows the day his grays come back in before Cas won’t stop touching his temple gently, smiling.

                That night, Cas helps undress Dean for bed and then lies down by Dean’s hip so he can take him into his warm mouth, gently, waiting until Dean grows hard in his mouth before he starts moving his head.

                Cas has a hand petting along Dean’s belly as he does that, like he’s making a point, but Dean’s mostly caught up in the flex of Cas’s throat, swallowing around him, the soft sounds Cas makes just for him. He cups his hand around Cas’s skull and tilts his hips up, closer already than he’d like, pushing past Cas’s wet, giving lips again and again until he achieves something like heaven. Cas pulls off and jerks him through it, then sucks him clean.

                By then, Cas is panting, his dick red and full, as he pushes himself up onto his knees. Dean curls a hand around Cas’s hip and croons praise while Cas fists his dick and lets his head loll back.

                “So good to me,” Dean says, feeling the muscle in Cas’s thigh jump beneath his hand as he rocks back and forth. Cas, like this, can never get old. Cas, like this, is still grace and heat and power, something Dean shouldn’t even be able to touch.  “Let me see it Cas. Come on, baby. I love you. I fucking love you.”

                And Cas comes over Dean’s stomach, hot and sudden, thrusting through his fist until he’s shuddering and oversensitive. His hand drops away, slowly, and Dean can only see his dark outline, kneeling on the bed, with the moon coming around the curtains behind him.

                “Fucking love you too,” he says, and, careless of the mess, he leans over and kisses the breath from Dean’s lungs.

**

                Dean keeps living the rest of his life. The cast comes off just in time for them to fly down to Galveston, Texas, to join Sam and Amelia for a long weekend. Sam takes a few days off from his practice and smiles secretively when he mentions he might have to take off even more time within the next year. Dean tells Amelia congratulations and she practically glows.

                They spend a day on the beach. Amelia and Sam trot off to play volleyball so it’s just him and Cas laid out on the beach towel.

“Hey, do you still have some of that chapstick stuff to prevent sunburn?” Dean asks.

“Yeah,” Cas says, and drops a kiss to Dean’s lips.

“Thanks,” Dean says, rubbing his lips together to spread it around.

 Dean’s still winter-pale from being laid up with a broken leg so Cas situates Dean between his legs and gets to work rubbing sunscreen across his shoulders. Dean closes his eyes and just relaxes into it; his shoulders have been _really_ tense lately.

“Oh my God, Tammy, look at that old gay couple! That’s so cute!” Whoever’s talking really shouldn’t be gabbing about them like they’re zoo animals, but Dean doesn’t particularly care to open his eyes just then.

Then he realizes that Cas has abruptly stopped rubbing lotion down his back.

“Dean,” Cas says, in the voice that used to preclude flashes of lightening and holy fire, “I did not battle my way through Heaven, Hell and Purgatory to be called _cute_ by some—”

Dean twists around and pulls Cas into a wet, sandy kiss.

“I think you missed a spot,” he says, when he pulls away, and then leans back into the vee of Cas’s thighs again.

He knows Cas is giving him a long-suffering look, but nonetheless Cas squirts another dollop of sun block into his hands and starts liberally lathering up Dean’s lower back. And finally huffs a laugh. And presses a kiss to the side of his head, just above his ear, where Dean’s gray hairs are almost indistinguishable in the vivid sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all lovely readers!
> 
> paperclothesline.tumblr.com


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